Wicked Musical is currently playing at the Durham Performing Arts Center and continue through May 27. The cast of Wicked visited Durham School of the Arts to teach a class on acting and movement on Tuesday.

Catherine Charlebois, who plays Nessarose, and fellow cast member Dan Pacheco, who plays Boq, on Tuesday visited Durham School of the Arts to teach a class on acting and movement.

Catherine Charlebois Plays Nessarose in Wicked

Dan Pacheco Plays Boq in Wicked

Charlebois and Pacheco spent the last several minutes of the hour-long class answering students’ questions, ranging from their educational backgrounds and paths to “Wicked” to whether actresses do their own makeup (the answer is, for the most part, yes).

“When you’re acting, specificity is key,” Pacheco advised the group of about 60 high school theater and dance students.

The professionals led the combined class through a series of exercises aimed at fostering specificity, including one in which students were randomly assigned playing cards denoting social class. Kings were the richest of the rich, turning their noses up at most anyone who approached them, while the lowly aces begged for spare change. Participants couldn’t come right out and tell one another the face on their cards – rather, they had to indicate their social class by their behavior.

Waltzing around the room with an air of egotism, junior Anna Acha was clearly a king. A rock musician who aspires to one day work in musical theater, she said after the class that she enjoyed the lesson, particularly since several of the exercises allowed all students to interact with one another.

Most of all, their visit offered students “one-on-one time with someone who is doing what it is that so many of them love to do,” explained DSA theater instructor Tom Nevels. “Our students are here at an arts high school, but I think a lot of times they still have messages coming to them about performance not being a career or needing to always have a backup plan.”

Charlebois and Pacheco said they often visit schools – from the elementary level up to performing arts universities – on tour stops.

“I know when I was their age, it would have been huge for me to see people – not too much older than they are – making it happen and loving their work,” Charlebois said.

And arts programs have become an endangered commodity, Pacheco said.

“Arts are really being cut back in so many communities right now,” he said. “I really like to try to bring some of that into the schools and show the students that you can do things with the arts in your life, and that the arts are important and that being creative is important.”